Protecting The Quarterback

Mandi took the money. “Don’t be surprised if I don’t answer,” she said as she exited the car. A few flashbulbs went off as Jonas pulled the door closed with his good arm.

“Take me to the airport,” he said, not wanting another night in the too-familiar hotel. He wanted out of New York.

Once the limo was cruising toward the airport, Jonas shrugged out of his sport coat. Shrugged out was so not the way to describe what he did to contort his body out of the coat so that his shoulder didn’t scream in pain. It merely whimpered. Loudly. He grimaced.

Damned shoulder, anyway. Stupid way to get hurt. No one noticed his hand. No one besides Brook Smith was close enough to see, and she’d been so petrified of the lights—what broadcaster was afraid of a few lights, anyway?—that he would be surprised if she even knew he was her co-presenter tonight.

With his good arm Jonas threw the coat across the car, unbuttoned the sleeves of his shirt and rolled up the cuffs. Dared his right arm to tremble.

Nothing.

Not even a hint of movement. He stretched out his arm at shoulder height. Winced against the pain and willed it not to move. The tremble started in his triceps before shooting through his arm to his fingertips.

A few words his Southern mother had taught him never to say in mixed company painted the inside of the limo red. Didn’t matter. The surgeon said it would take time. He had nine more weeks before training camp. Nine more weeks to figure out why simple tasks like taking off a shirt caused more pain months after the accident than deadlifting two hundred pounds had before he’d ever been hurt.

His phone rang and he nearly tossed it aside because the number was unknown. Something made him answer.

A smooth Kentucky accent poured through the cell, making his muscles clench and his mouth go dry.

Brook Smith. The sound of her voice through his phone was enough to make him...wish she’d been the one with him in the limo instead of Mandi. Before tonight he’d never met the pretty reporter in person. Her legs were longer than he’d imagined, peeking through the long slit of her gown as she’d walked with purpose across the stage to the podium. Her skin had burned him through the thin silk of her dress, and he could still smell the light scent of vanilla that accompanied their trip across the stage. A scent that had nearly made him forget they were in front of an audience for the first sixty seconds of their acquaintance. Now her voice was close, too close, in the limo, and it seemed as soft as he’d imagined the honeyed strands that had escaped her fancy hairdo would feel against his skin.

“...so I’m going to be in Texas next week to do a sit-down with the Bulls for the network, I’d love to chat with you, too.”

“About how I played Prince Charming to your clumsy Belle at the awards tonight?” he asked, trying to throw her off balance.

“Prince Charming ends up with Snow White, not Belle—”

“But the Beast would have let you fall right into the floodlights. Prince Charming always rides to the rescue.” Probably he shouldn’t have mentioned the Beast, not because now she would equate him with the fairy-tale character, but because men like him weren’t supposed to know about fairy tales. He was beer and football and Vin Diesel movies, wasn’t that the basis of a three-week tell-all his last girlfriend sold to the tabloids? Jonas frowned at the phone.

“The Beast would have swept me into a waltz and danced me straight to the podium,” she said, and there was what could only be described as starch in her voice. “After this year you’ll have free agent status and can go anywhere. Fans all over the world want to know if you’ll stay a Kentuckian or find a football home somewhere else.”

Everyone wanted to know. Hell, he wanted to know. Unlike many of his football brethren, Jonas had joined the league with the intention of being a one-team star. He liked the money that came with football, but a strong team was more important. Then he’d been drafted by the Kentuckians and for the past five years he’d only been playing for the money.

Now, if his shoulder was really junked, no other teams would even look.

Then he’d be an athlete without a team. The mere thought made his heel tap against the carpeted floor of the limo.

“Free agency could totally change your career, unless there was more to that injury than the team let on.” She waited a beat. “Jonas?”

He had no skills outside of football.

“Mr. Nash?”

His degree was in freaking Hospitality, for crying out loud, because it gave him more time to concentrate on football. He was goddamned Mr. Football to fans all over the world. He was not, repeat not, sitting down with Brook Smith to chat about his career plans, the injury to his shoulder or whatever else was on her greedy, reporter mind. Not until he was sure he was over football. Right now all he was sure of was that he wanted one more season calling the plays.

It might already be too late, the sly voice in his head said. The voice that sounded a lot like his mother.

“I can make myself available. Whatever works for you, I’ll work into my schedule.” Her voice was cool, at odds with the rising temperature in the limo.

Unsaid questions peppered his mind. What if the rest of rehab went by with as little improvement as he’d seen in the past weeks? What if the Kentuckians didn’t want him? What the hell kind of life could a man have if he was washed up before the age of thirty-two?

“I’ll be in Kentucky, but maybe next time.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE VIDEO PACKAGE rolled across the screen, and Brooks glanced at her phone as her text alert buzzed. It was the assignment editor for the sports department. Nash says no interview. Again.

Damn it. Two months had passed since the awards show, and the man continued to dodge her requests for a sit-down.

“What are the ramifications for the college program now?” The sports anchor in the studio asked, his voice sounding hollow through her earwig.

Brooks refocused. She would get Jonas Nash to sit down with her, but she would not let the promise of a story with him jeopardize this one.

“In the immediate, they’ve lost Bobby McCord, the head coach, and this is only a week after a Spring Game in which the offense looked off-balance and the defense couldn’t seem to make a play,” Brooks said to the sports anchor on the other side of the television screen. “My sources tell me a job search is in the works, but finding a coach willing to take on a program that has lost its star running back and defensive end because of a doping scandal, and before the collegiate authorities have handed down their sanctions, is going to be tough.”

“Thanks, Brooks. We’ll have more on this breaking story as it hap—”

“Was it hard turning your own boyfriend in as the head of the steroid ring?” The news anchor, a man Brooks had never liked, butted into the conversation between her and the sports anchor. Brooks blinked.

“Bobby McCord was not my boy—”

“But you’d been dating.”

“No,” Brooks drew out the word. “We had dinner—twice—but that was months ago—”

“Did you give him any warning about what you were about to do?”

Brooks tried to separate the boiling anger she felt for the anchor from her job to report the facts about one of the biggest sports scandals so far this year. She’d done nothing wrong. Three weeks of serious investigation had led her to discovering Bobby headed up the steroid ring within his program. Three weeks of paperwork and following leads and working with the authorities. Still, the questions the anchor had asked made her clench her fists.

“We asked Coach McCord for an interview after he’d been arrested, but he declined. Of course we will keep in contact through his legal team, and will bring you the latest on this story as it develops,” Brooks said, smile pasted on her face until the director turned off her camera. Then she heaved a sigh of relief and closed her eyes.

Where had all that come from? She knew Alan Gentry didn’t like her, but she never imagined he would try to implicate her in a story like this.

One of the other reporters clapped a hand over her shoulder. “Nice work on the McCord piece,” he said as he passed.

“Thanks.” Brooks unclipped her microphone, leaving it on the high stool where reporters sat during newsroom live shots. She pulled the earwig from her ear and let it dangle over her shoulder, picked up her phone and began paging through her emails as she walked slowly back to her desk, trying to figure out what Alan was up to. It didn’t make sense.

Their station was the first to break the story about steroid use in the program.

“You done for the day?”

Brooks drummed her fingers against her desk. She could make a few more calls, maybe try Jonas’s agent for the hundredth time, since going straight to the quarterback was getting her nowhere. She could confront Alan, but that would accomplish nothing. Or she could go home, have a glass of wine and celebrate being the first sports reporter to break this story. It was another feather in her cap.

“Yeah,” she told the other reporter, who she knew was on until the eleven o’clock news. “I’m going to call this a day.”

She gathered her things, put her earwig into the box in her desk and then slung her backpack over her shoulder.

A definitely good day. And tomorrow, she would go back to her journalistic pursuit of Jonas Nash.

* * *

“FIVE MORE LIKE THAT. Smooth and steady, buddy,” Tom Jenkins, the head trainer for the Kentuckians, said in a low voice. Jonas rested the heavy bar on the palms of his hands as he adjusted his grip. Before he was injured he’d bench-pressed at least twice as much weight and not felt a thing.

Okay, he’d have felt something but that something was a grain of salt in a paper cut compared to the sensation he felt now. It was as if he could feel the tendons in his shoulder straining with each press. As if they might rip off the rim of his shoulder socket. Again.

Or maybe he was just afraid. A candy-ass desperate to be on the field.

Scared shitless to actually be on the field.

“Smooth and steady, my ass,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Three weeks ago you were barely lifting the bar with no weights. This is improvement.”

“Training camp starts in just over a month, it’s not enough.” He lowered the bar again, preparing for the final lift.

“You can only go as fast as your body will let you, you know,” Tom said around a yawn. The first rays of sunlight shot through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the weight room. They usually used the room for rehab in the early afternoon, but because of the clinic, he’d asked the trainer to meet him earlier.

“I know what my body can do.”

“You know what your body could do,” Tom corrected. Jonas bit his tongue to keep the smart-ass reply in check. As much as he hated to admit it, Tom was right. Before that hit, before the strain he’d been feeling became a partial labral tear, he’d been one of the most accurate and strong quarterbacks in the league despite being part of a losing team. Now he was under the mediocre mark and it scared him.

“Same time tomorrow?”

“We aren’t done.” Jonas sat on the edge of the bench and wiped an already sweaty towel over his face. “I want to work on throwing with my left.”

“Jonas—”

“I know what my body can do,” he said, cutting Tom off before he got started on all the reasons why Jonas shouldn’t try to teach himself how to throw with his left arm.

“You can’t just decide you’ll throw left,” Tom still managed to say before Jonas cut him off again.

“Sure I can.” He was Jonas Freaking Nash. He’d be on the field, fear or no fear. It was the only place he knew he belonged.

“You’re never going to throw with your left the way you throw with your right. It’s about grip, not just strength. It’s about how you set your feet, how you roll your hips.”

“Then teach me.”

“No quarterback has gone from lefty to righty or righty to lefty in the month before training camp, and those who have done it never played at your level.”

“There’s a first time for everything. Might as well be me.” Had to be him. He was the leader of the Kentuckians. He had his coach with him again, the defense was coming along. The guys were excited about the start of a new season, new coaches, new playbook. His name and number were the same, but Jonas had changed, too. No more tabloid quarterback. No more Hollywood starlets.

A memory of Brook’s voice on the phone whispered into his mind, but he pushed her away. It was time he concentrated on football again.

This might be his last chance.

The trainer grabbed a whiteboard and oversize marker from the stack near the Nautilus machines and handed them to Jonas.

“Write your name. Not an autograph, just write it.”

Jonas followed his directions. Tom handed him another whiteboard.

“Now write your name using your left hand.”

Jonas started and stopped. Gritted his teeth and ordered his left hand to make the letters look the way they did when he wrote with his right hand. His left didn’t get the message. The letters were crooked and sloped unevenly across the board instead of following the imaginary line Jonas intended to follow.

“When you can write your name the same with your left as you do with your right, we’ll talk about throwing left.”

“Next week.”

“Go home, Jonas. Keep rotating ice and heat. I’ll see you in here tomorrow.” Tom left the workout room. Jonas studied the two boards. The letters on the left could have been a four-year-old’s attempt. He Frisbee’d the boards across the room and then, elbows on his knees, put his head in his hands.

He could figure out a new career path. Could find joy and even meaning in something else. But the something else wouldn’t have the shine that football had. When he was on the field, there was an order.

He stalked over to the treadmill, pulled up a workout program and started to run.

While the incline increased and decreased and the treadmill sped on to nowhere, Jonas focused on his plan. If it started with writing, he would write. It would be better than mindlessly flipping through TV channels, anyway. Less likely he’d run across another commentator talking about his chances of coming back from the injury.

He would get football back, even if he had to change the way he played the game.

* * *

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Brooks sat in an overstuffed chair outside the network offices. Although the network and the affiliate she worked for were housed in the same building, she had never actually been to the fifteenth floor. Had never rubbed elbows with the network heads.

Heck, she’d never gotten so much as an email from them, much less the terse voicemail she’d listened to at least ten times already this morning requesting she meet with Gary Jacobs.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. Two minutes past the last time she’d checked the chrome-fitted clock. The well-heeled receptionist studiously avoided her gaze, concentrating instead on the magazine she was leafing through.

She sat back against the butter-soft leather of the chair, willing herself to stop thinking the worst about why she’d been summoned. She hoped he wouldn’t pass along another not-so-veiled insinuation that she had used a man to get a story, never mind the fact she’d barely known said man. Or that said man now faced criminal charges. The receptionist picked up the phone near her elbow, said something Brooks couldn’t hear and then stood, her willowy frame towering over Brooks’s substantial five feet nine inches in height. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, hoping the rest of her usual ponytail was still in place.

“You can go in now,” the receptionist said, motioning her through the thick, mahogany door to the left of her large desk. “Mr. Jacobs, Miss Smith,” she said as she closed the door, leaving Brooks alone with the head of sports programming for the network.

Gary Jacobs tapped a few computer keys as he motioned her to the chairs before his desk. “Hope I’m not dragging you away from another investigation, Miss Smith,” he said, his gaze still focused on the computer screen.

“Not at all, we’ll be following up on the scandal for a few more days. What can I do for you?” Brooks sat in another cool leather chair, crossed her legs at the ankle as her proper, Southern mother had taught her when she was little and clasped her hands in her lap.

“You can pack your bags for your next assignment. Louisville—”

“Pack my bags?” Brooks shook her head. She had to be hearing things, right? The professional baseball season was in full swing, college teams were still in conference play. She didn’t cover basketball, and football players wouldn’t start reporting for training camps for a few more weeks. “We’re still covering all of the bases on the steroid—”

The network exec cut her off. “We’re starting a new pilot program, and we’d like our rising network star to be part of it.” When she didn’t say anything—couldn’t say anything, if she were honest with herself—he said, “The rising star would be you.” Brooks nodded, still not trusting her voice. “One reporter will be assigned to each of the professional football teams as full-fledged beat reporters. News of the day, of course, but we’re also looking for human interest, behind-the-scenes kind of stuff.” He barely paused before launching into more detail about the new program the network wanted to implement, and Brooks’s heart beat faster.

“The local affiliates usually cover that kind of thing.” Those were the kinds of stories she’d been covering for the past eight years. Her heart started to race.

“We’re launching a football-only network this summer, and to do it right we need more than local affiliate reporting. There will be daily shows, special programming, too, but we have too much time to fill for the locals to help.” Jacobs cleared his throat. “You’d be working directly for the network—not for the affiliate in Louisville—but we would need a year’s commitment.”

“I’m not sure what to say.”

“Frankly speaking, you should say yes, and before I call the next name on my list.”

He waited a beat, picked up a pen and began tapping it against the desk blotter. “You have good instincts and you understand the game and the players better than anyone who hasn’t played a down. Women like you because you don’t wear evening gowns and high heels on the sidelines. Men like you because—” he eyed her for a moment and Brooks’s cheeks began to burn “—well, you were voted Hottest Female Sportscaster for a reason. As a network, we like that you draw evenly from both demographics, that you know how to tell a story and that you’re passionate about the game. The only question is do you want this?”

“Y-yes, I want it.” She did want it. She wanted football to be part of her life. So badly. She knew football. Believed in it. Waited on pins and needles every spring to see who was drafted and at what pick. During the season she lived on the highlights, dissecting each play and player to learn more about what made them work. A few bad apples like Bobby McCord couldn’t kill her love for the sport or her love for reporting on it.

“Are you willing to put in the extra time? To follow up on leads like you did on the steroid scandal? To put any personal relationships aside to break a story?”

“Of course.” And she already had her first scoop in mind.

“Then what do you say? And whatever the answer is, I would highly advise it not include the words ‘think’ or ‘about it.’” Gary Jacobs’s voice took on a stern edge as he spoke, making Brooks sit up straighter in the chair.

“When and where do I report?”

They talked a few more minutes about contracts and equipment, what station she would co-op space from and when her photographer would arrive. Brooks surreptitiously pinched her hand several times, hoping that if this was a dream she wouldn’t wake herself up. But when she walked out of the office, she was still on the fifteenth floor. Still wearing her favorite leopard ballet flats, still tucking that same wayward strand of hair behind her ear.

This was real.

She was going back to Louisville. Brooks swallowed. And she knew exactly what her next story would be: Jonas Nash and his future in football.

* * *

“BOOBS ON THE FLOOR, boys,” a gruff voice called out from around the corner.

Jonas splashed his way out of the icy whirlpool bath and to his locker. Grabbed a too-short white towel and secured it around his waist. There were only a couple of other guys in this early in the summer. All of them stood there oblivious that their junk was now on display. More likely they just didn’t care. Jonas had no issue showing off his body, but he was in no hurry to show off to someone outside the organization the surgical scar he’d acquired after the season or answer the questions sure to come with it. He couldn’t keep the rotator cuff surgery a complete secret, but only his circle knew the extent of the tear that happened when a defender laid him out on the last play of last season.

“Don’t pull a hammie, there, Muscles,” a honeyed voice that had haunted him for the past two months said from behind him. “Nothing there I haven’t seen before.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Brook Smith, the Hottest Female Sportscaster.” Damn his rotten luck. Annoyance flashed in her pretty green eyes, and he wondered why. Because of the award? Or because of him? Women usually weren’t annoyed by him, but there could always be a first time.

Jonas pulled the green tee down his flat abs and schooled his features into a careless mask as he turned.

“Or we could just stick with Belle.” He grinned at her annoyed expression. She wore a sleeveless blouse and a bright green pencil skirt that showed off the length of her legs and the curve of her hip. His mouth went a little dry again, as if she’d somehow sucked all the moisture out of the room—out of him—just by walking up to his locker. “I see you’ve traded in your ice skates for a safer option.”

Not that the flat shoes she wore were any less attractive. Her delicate ankle bones flexed as she closed the gap between them, and he decided her calves would be defined whether she wore tottering heels or flip-flops. He’d like to see her in both, or neither, and nothing else. Which was not where his mind needed to be right now. Jonas chastised himself.

“And I’ve finally tracked down the elusive Beast again.”

“Didn’t realize I was so hard to find,” he said and was rewarded when a faint tinge of pink lightened her cheeks. “For a princess you’re very determined.”

“All the best princesses are,” she said, and then seemed to think better of it. “Not that I need a man to come to my rescue.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“I didn’t exactly go careening off the stage.” The pink darkened and she narrowed her eyes. Then something switched. She straightened her spine and set her shoulders back and the annoyance in her gaze turned to something else. Real embarrassment, maybe? Whatever it was it made the green in her eyes deepen and Jonas had to remind himself, again, that she was a reporter. He’d had his fill of them.

She sucked in a breath and said, “But thank you, anyway. It could have been a lot worse if you hadn’t been there.”

“True. That was some pretty fancy footwork.” Jonas told himself to stop baiting her. Let her say what she wanted and get out of his locker space. But he couldn’t seem to stop. “I didn’t realize princesses normally walked with their legs going in different directions.”

She bit her bottom lip and then folded her arms across her chest. “I’m trying to say thank you. Would you stop being such an ass about it?”

“Okay,” he said solemnly. “You’re welcome.”

She was pretty without all that goop the makeup artist at the awards show had plopped on her creamy skin. Her face and arms were lightly touched by the sun and a fine line of freckles danced across her nose. Jonas wanted to run his fingers over those freckles, but that would be yet another bad idea, so he stepped over the low bench and into the main walkway, into her personal space. He saw her pupils dilate, and smiled.